10 thoughts on “Mayor of New York says roads are not for cars. And cyclists and pedestrians are “more important” than motorists”

If only that mindset were as widespread — even ‘epidemic’ — as the ubiquitous diseases that keep cropping up year after year, we would have a healthier and more settled society. SELFISHNESS drives car ownership, not independence and mobility.

I got news for you, Ian Brett Cooper, the world is not a perfect place. You get more with a smile and a little positive reinforcement when changing behavior is the goal. You constantly complain and brag. Doesn’t your bike ever make you happy? Every comment is negative. You are completely humorless and your sad miserable life is your own reward.

As a first-timer here, I don’t see Ian Brett Cooper’s post as negative. I too see equality -among ALL road-users – as the solution to most of our problems on the road. It’s absurd that people on foot should defer to drivers, especially in urban settings. If anything it should be the other way round. If we took it in turns, instead of living (and dying) by priority, most of our road safety and congestion problems would vanish in a puff of exhaust smoke. More on the subject at Equality Streets.

Wow, good for him (and New Yorkers). Bloombito has been talking the talk, ever since he hired Janette Sadik-Khan who quickly got to work crafting new street configurations with visionary designers like Jan Gehl.

He didn’t say “motorists”, he said “automobile riders”. Calling a car-rider a “motorist” is like calling a ‘Net-surfer a “computerist”. Most car-riders know as much about motors as ‘Net-surfers know about computers, which is approximately zero-point-squat.

I also agree with Ian Brett Cooper. Until you actually get out on a bike on the streets of NYC and see just how unbelievably dangerous and laughably inadequate the present bike lanes are, you wouldn’t understand. It’s currently slightly better than having no bike lanes at all, but not by much. Bike lanes only cover about 3% of all city streets. While I agree with the Mayor’s rhetoric, let’s see some REAL and substantial changes.

"How cyclists were the first to push for good roads & became the pioneers of motoring." ROADS WERE NOT BUILT FOR CARS is a print, Kindle, iPad and free e-book about roads history.
The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads. They were also the first promoters of motoring; the first motoring journalists had first been cycling journalists; and there was a transfer of technology from cycling to motoring without which cars as we know them wouldn't exist! Nearly seventy car marques – including Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC – had bicycling beginnings.
'Roads Were Not Built for Cars' is a history book, focussing on a time when cyclists had political clout, in Britain and especially in America. The book researches the Roads Improvement Association - a lobbying group created by the Cyclists' Touring Club in 1886 - and the Good Roads movement organised by the League of American Wheelmen in the same period.

The book was published in a Kickstarter limited-edition in September 2014. Island Press of Washington, D.C. published a revised second-edition in April 2015.
Thanks to research grants and advertising support, text-only PDF chapters from the book are slowly being made available for free to read online. The free distribution model is being used in order to get the book seen by as many eyes as possible. The paid-for publications are richly illustrated; the free versions have had the pix stripped out and replaced with adverts.
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